by Gregg Podolski ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 23, 2024
Enough action, killing, twists, and betrayals for a whole season of quality TV.
A highly successful middleman who arranges contract killings is put on the spot when his latest success leads to a contract he really doesn’t want.
Rick Carter—not his real name, of course—is the man you call when you have a problem that requires a violent and decisive solution. Since drifting into this work years ago to support his wife, Denise, and their children, Maggie and Ethan, he’s brokered many successful arrangements between clients and hit men before and after abandoning the family he could no longer shield from the consequences of his lucrative practice. When his latest success—a double murder committed by rising star Ian Matthews at the request of mid-tier crime boss Leon White—brings him to the attention of bent Interpol operative Patricia Baum, he’s flattered but unwilling to arrange the deaths of six members of an international task force on trafficking: two from the FBI, two from MI5, and two from Mossad. Trish, who doesn’t care about his scruples, presses him to the breaking point, and he’s soon engaged Ghost and The Persian, a pair of seasoned professionals, to join Ian, allotting them two targets apiece. The situation abruptly gets more complicated when Ian calls to tell Rick that Trish has quietly added a third target to his list: Robert Baglioni, a Philadelphia homicide detective who’s engaged to Denise. So Rick bands together with his old friend Joey Walls, a well-connected seller of drugs and guns, and Erica Krieg, an aspiring assassin who’s been drummed out of the German Special Forces, to protect Rob and the family he’s convinced are in the sights of the A-list killers he’s just hired.
Enough action, killing, twists, and betrayals for a whole season of quality TV.Pub Date: July 23, 2024
ISBN: 9798212026406
Page Count: 350
Publisher: Blackstone
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2024
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by Max Brooks ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 16, 2020
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
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New York Times Bestseller
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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by Patricia Cornwell ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 8, 2024
Expert, but unsurprising.
The death of an old friend who was more than a friend sends Dr. Kay Scarpetta down her latest rabbit hole.
If every body tells a story, the corpse of 7-year-old Luna Briley sings the blues. On top of the many signs of ongoing physical abuse, there’s the fatal gunshot wound to her head. Ryder and Piper Briley, the wealthy and powerful parents who didn’t call the police until after their daughter died, insist that Luna’s death was an accident, or maybe a suicide. Scarpetta doesn’t think so, and her refusal to release the body to the Brileys’ hand-picked mortician moves them to legal action against her as Virginia’s chief medical examiner. You’d think it would be a relief to put this case aside for another when Scarpetta’s niece, Secret Service agent Lucy Farinelli, calls her and ferries her by helicopter to an abandoned Oz theme park owned by Ryder Briley, but this one’s even more heartbreaking. Scarpetta is there to examine the body of astrophysicist Sal Giordano, her close friend and former lover, who was evidently kidnapped, held in captivity for several hours, and tossed out of an unidentified aircraft. The leading suspects are the Brileys; Carrie Grethen, Lucy’s sociopathic ex-lover, with whom Scarpetta has repeatedly tangled in the past; and the UFO that dumped Giordano’s body without leaving the usual traces for air-traffic technologies to pick up. The multiple rounds of physical examinations Scarpetta conducts on both victims are every bit as meticulous and gripping as fans would expect; the killer’s identity is neither surprising nor interesting, but Cornwell juggles her trademark forensics, and the paranormal hints she’s become increasingly invested in, more dexterously than usual.
Expert, but unsurprising.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2024
ISBN: 9781538770382
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2024
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